Phil Foden says a smile has returned to his football as the 25-year-old regains form in the early stages of 2025\u201326.<\/p>\n
Foden\u2019s revival follows a difficult period. He endured a surprisingly poor Euro 2024 with England despite the Three Lions reaching the final, and he went from having his best season to arguably his worst in 2024\u201325. He later explained he was dealing with “a lot of things going on off the pitch mentally”. An ankle ligament injury suffered towards the end of 2023\u201324 was also a factor.<\/p>\n
A landmark moment came this week when Foden scored a Champions League brace in City\u2019s 4\u20131 thrashing of Borussia Dortmund. The performance felt significant for a player who has been working back to his previous levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m loving it,\u201d Foden remarked to TNT Sports post-match. \u201cI just need to play with a smile on my face, which I\u2019m doing. Last year was tough, not just for myself but for everyone. There is a new togetherness this season and you can tell.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou learn a lot from it when you go through a tough patch. We have great captains in our team and we speak about how we can get back on track. And we\u2019ve added great players to the squad as well and that\u2019s brought real hunger and togetherness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just about trying to be the team we used to be and this season we are seeing glimpses of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola declared to reporters: \u201cPhil is back!\u201d<\/p>\n
The combination of restored confidence, recovery from injury and a renewed dressing-room unity is presented by Foden and his manager as the explanation for his return to form in 2025\u201326.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Foden credits a returned smile for his revival after a tough 2024-25 and ankle ligament issue. today<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238,172],"tags":[947,1047,1019],"class_list":["post-4297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-ankle-injury","tag-champions-league","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}